Go Cat8!

I upgraded to CAT8 for the shielding and increased protection from RFI/EMI. Each pair of conductors is wrapped in foil to prevent crosstalk, then the entire cable is shielded. I’m using it from router to streamer and there is an audible lowering of the noise-floor.

I stumbled upon Dacrown spectacular and reliable Cat 8 cable while looking for a replacement network cord for my household. And from my albeit short experience of using this cable, I have to say that this is among the best network cables.

@richtruss said;

‘I’ve tried fiberoptic converters in several implementations in my system and it’s always sounded thin, lacking real natural tone of instruments and voices. I think its the conversion of photons back to electrons at the receiving end that generates harmonics of the fundamental signal frequency, that then interfere with the downstream electronics.’

That is interesting to hear Rich. I have a Fios router with ethernet or wifi connecting my source. I generally prefer the sound of my iphone in LTE mode (not using the wifi signal) attached via usb to stream Qobuz. Not night and day difference, but it sounds clearer, cleaner, more resolved especially with respect to space and homogenization of image.

Last week I bought 2 x Furutech CAT 8 cables and 2 x Furutech New Model HDMI cables specifically for my OPPO Blu Ray, Smart TV and Android TV Box.

Besides an upgrade in picture and sound quality I got a large sound improvement in my main system.

I can only put this down to the heavy shielding in these cables. Ordinary HDMI and Lan cables must create a lot of RFI.

I'll be getting some ONTI cables soon too.

So my Onti cables arrived today. I used the free shipping to save $40 and it came in less than 2 weeks as opposed to the well over a month Aliexpress indicated. (I’m in NYC)

I ordered a 12 meter and a 1 meter. The long cable goes from my Mac Pro tower’s second ethernet port to the EtherRegen and the 1 meter goes from that to the Directstream Bridge II card input.

I haven’t been listening to my rig lately as I’m extremely preoccupied embarking on a true crime feature film crowdfunding venture I may post here about at some point, but I did play 2 familiar tracks several times before the cable swap.

I used Sufjan Steven first 2 cuts from his Illinois album, since there are some nice flutes with a lot of detail and air on the opening track, and the second track starts with a ensemble of drums building to a crescendo.

The cat 8 cables were brand new so perhaps there will be some further improvement over time?

The first thing I noticed was that Sufjan’s voice had so much lower energy then before. It was not subtle in any way. Everything seemed to have more bandwidth and I noticed some detail in the mid-upper range that I hadn’t previously.

While the drum crescendo didn’t seem to deeper, it also seemed a bit more forward and articulate.

I wish I had more time and energy to do a more exhaustive comparison (the old cables are still there so I could swap back some time)

Although I didn’t listen to Alexander Desplat’s soundtrack to Wes Anderson’s French Dispatch before the cable switch, I’ve never heard it sound better. Before it sounded nice but now it’s closer to a demo track. The individual horns seem to have more inner detail.

Another wild thing is that when I mute the subs via remote, they seem to have more effect than previously.

Overall I would say theses cables open the window onto the music wider, letting more energy come through.

I really thank you @antigrunge2 for bringing this to our attention.

It’s absolutely crazy that 95$ Total for 2 Ethernet cables can improve a system so much. I can’t remember what rating the cables I was using are - maybe cat 6A, I seem to remember buying years ago to replace cat 5.

The law of increasing returns (or as JA wrote I think, “accelerating return?”